"The town is in mourning, all the shops are shut," Muntaha al-Atrash, spokeswoman of the Syrian rights group Sawasiya (Equal), told AFP, adding that "at least 20,000" attended the Douma funerals which passed off peacefully.
"Protests will continue. The people will not stay silent any longer because the barrier of fear has been broken," she said.
"Eight people were buried in Daraa," Mazen Darwish, director of the Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression which had its headquarters shut down by the authorities in 2009, told AFP.
"There are three other people who were killed Friday but they are from neighbouring villages Arabnin and Isbinah," he said.
Activists blamed the deaths after Friday weekly prayers on a crackdown by security forces, although government officials pinned responsibility on an "armed group" which opened fire from rooftops on both protesters and police.
"He who kills his own people is a traitor" and "where are the gangs?" people chanted after mourners marched from the cemetery through the city centre before settling down for a sit-in outside the town hall.
Security forces kept a low profile in Douma on Sunday, residents and mourners told AFP, but they did check the identities of those entering the suburb north of Damascus as volunteers took on the task of directing traffic.
Facebook, meanwhile, called for a "Week of the Martyrs" protest in Syria in honour of those killed in the clampdown on pro-reform rallies that mobilised thousands on the Muslim day of rest and prayer.
"The Week of the Martyrs will be a thorn on the regime's side," the organisers of Facebook group Syrian Revolution 2011 said, designating Tuesday as the first day of protests focused on coastal towns "far from the capital."
The group also called for a boycott of cell phone companies on Wednesday, a rally in Damascus against the ruling Baath party on Thursday, and countrywide demonstrations on Friday.
Assad on Sunday tasked Safar with forming a new government, the state-run news agency SANA reported, in a fresh bid to quell pro-reform protests and after he failed to lift emergency laws in place since 1963.
Activists on Saturday said 46 people were detained by security forces in a wave of arrests in protest centres including Douma, the southern tribal town of Daraa and the northern industrial city of Homs.
One Douma resident said 90 people detained in a roundup by security forces were released late on Saturday and 15 were "still missing," while a human rights activist told AFP seven remained behind bars.
"We counted them," said the resident. "Most of the people detained say it's really bad but are afraid to give details. They were not tortured but they are beaten before being detained."
The authorities also freed Soheir Attasi, a human rights activist arrested during a March 16 rally in Damascus calling for the release of political prisoners, a lawyer said.
A Reuters photographer was freed on Sunday, six days after being detained in Damascus, the news agency said in London. Khaled al-Hariri, 50, was one of four Reuters journalists held in Syria over the past week. All have now been freed.
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